


Just This Once

by Saraste



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl wakes up in the middle of the night, sure that Glenn is dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just This Once

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a quickie ficlet, written to flex my writing muscles. And I wanted to do some darlenn, ansgty at that. :)

Daryl stirs in the dead of the night, surfacing to the world of the awake between a peaceful breath of sleep and the next, a terrified gasp of wakefulness, into a world where something is terribly, horribly wrong. Well, apart from the obvious.

In the darkened tent, he gropes at his side, searching what he fears that he’s lost. After what’s felt like a lifetime but can’t have been, his fingers collide with Glenn’s solid body. Warm. Alive. Breathing. 

Not cold, motionless and dead, like it was in the brief flash of nightmare that he’d had, and which woke him up. 

He doesn’t care that Glenn shakes awake as he shifts and winds his arms around the boy, his boy, shaking and disturbed. Daryl tries to be tough, he is tough, you need to be in this crazy insane world. But when it comes to his boy, there are cracks, he can’t hold onto his mask, his shield, properly. 

Because it’s Glenn. His Glenn. 

Now whispering groggily, asking what’s wrong, wanting to make it right, as he always does. Daryl loving him even more for that. 

“Daryl?” 

There’re sentences in his name, in that one thing alone. In Glenn’s tone, in the way his fingers lace with Daryl’s, there’s everything right there. 

“Am fine, was just a dream,” Daryl says gruffly, squeezing the hand in his, drawing Glenn closer. He never hears of hearing Glenn speak. Dreads the day when the words will be cut short and all that comes from his Korean’s mouth will be the mindless groans of a Walker. It’s always in his dreams, that thought, that fear. That he’ll not be able to shield Glenn, that his boy will get bit, will burn with fever or die from something else and come back… 

“That’s what you always say,” Glenn murmurs, shifts against him and kisses him. 

Because Glenn knows about the dreams, even when Daryl never says anything. Because he’s had them too. Is having them, will have them. Right along the rest of the world. Well, not the particular dreams they have, but something like. Glenn kisses him and he feels at peace. He savors it, for who knows if they’ll die tomorrow, or if someone will yell a warning and they’ll be thrown to battle. 

He shifts, grabs Glenn closer and just loses himself in the boy, just this once, even when ‘just this once’ has happened so many times it’s lost all meaning, except of self-deception. For Daryl has no place in his head, filled to the brim with an iron will to keep Glenn safe, keep the other’s safe and survive, for any thoughts of letting himself go, letting down his guard, his alertness. Even when he does, over and over. 

So he loses himself in the boy’s embrace, his reassuring warm lips and the knowledge that they’re alive, that his boy’s still with him. 

Just this once, even when he knows, as Glenn rolls him over and settles on his hips, that the nightmares come back, every fucking night. 

Still, _just this once._


End file.
